Chochmat HaLev

This talk will revisit historically heteronormative, often sexist Jewish sexual laws and will queer Torah by viewing the ancient through a modern lens. Learn what traditional Judaism says about your love and sex lives, your body, and more, and learn how to read the ancient into the modern with love, acceptance, and understanding.

Writer and educator Merissa Nathan Gerson served as a consultant for the writer’s room for Amazon’s hit show, Transparent, where she shared her research at the Graduate Theological Union here in Berkeley, California. Her focus on sex and gender with professor Naomi Seidman and on inherited trauma with Stefania Pandolfo helped form the story arc of season two. Her work appears in The Atlantic, Lilith, Refinery29, Playboy, and more and she speaks nationally on sex, Judaism, and the inheritance of trauma and memory.